The Rob Ford 'Crackstarter:' A Crowdfunding Campaign to Root Against

With Gawker's campaign over on Indiegogo right now to raise funds to purchase a video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack, rewards-based crowdfunding is currently having its Skokie vs. the neo-Nazis moment.

The point is that the court has found time and again that the protections of the First Amendment are quite broad, and must be applied equally, even to groups and speech that the vast majority of Americans find abhorrent. This is why we all know about the Westboro Baptist Church today.

In the crowdfunding world thus far, which is made up almost entirely of privately-held platforms, Indiegogo has been the one major platform that has opted to operate in the spirit of our First Amendment (and also in the spirit of laissez faire economics) with an "anything goes" attitude. There are, of course, some limitations to what can be crowdfunded on Indiegogo -- neo-Nazi groups actually couldn't use the site for anything that promotes hate, for example -- but for the most part It has been far more permissive than the other widely recognized platform, Kickstarter.

So far, it's seemed to me that Kickstarter's curated approach and Indiegogo's policy of openness have complemented each other nicely and helped grow the industry by offering a (potentially) high profile home for projects of all types. If Kickstarter feels too much like the cool kids' playground, you can always take your project to Indiegogo, and if Indiegogo seems a little too all over the place, you can refine your campaign to be a better fit for Kickstarter. We have our crowdfunding Ying and Yang, and all is well.

At least it was, until Gawker decided to thrust this monstrosity of a campaign into our happy little world via Indiegogo.

No stranger to sensationalism and questionable methods of acquiring a scoop, Nick Denton's flagship gossip blog is looking to crowdfund $200,000 to pay Somali drug dealers for a video of embattled Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine and slurring (in more ways than one) the names of his political adversaries.

A Gawker editor and two Toronto Star reporters have seen the video in person, but its owners say they require the six-figure amount to hand it over for publication, claiming to want the money to move out to Calgary and start a new life.

Right...

No matter how you spin it, Gawker's Indiegogo campaign is asking for money from the public to give to crack dealers and further humiliate a Canadian politician (who clearly seems to have a problem).

Indiegogo's Terms of Service do prohibit using the platform to pay drug dealers for drugs, but it's apparently fine to pay drug dealers for video footage.

And perhaps it should be. Like the protections that America's First Amendment provides for everyone, even hate-mongers like neo-Nazis and the Westboro Baptist Church, maybe the crowdfunding world needs a platform like Indiegogo that can be a go-to venue for even the most base campaigns, like Gawker's Crackstarter.

Comments

Seriously, if you knew just how embarrassing and dysfunctional this mayor is for Toronto, and you were a Torontonian, you'd be happier than a mayor on crack that there was at least this avenue to hold him to account. It has been a constant barrage of nonsense and stupidity since he was elected, and most of us would be glad of any opportunity whatsoever to have done with him, at almost any cost. Some money goes to crack dealers? So fucking what? Cops pay criminals for tips all the time. That's what you have to do sometimes to make sure the right things get done, that people are held to account for their actions, that innocent people are not subjected to the whims of a maniac, and so on.

I do hope he gets help for his issues. But he's had ample - ample! - opportunities to remove himself from the spotlight and avoid further humiliation by resigning.

Crowdsfunding $200k for justice? Most legitimate and moral use of crowdfunding I can even imagine.

Tim Burden is bang on accurate, and I contributed $5 myself. The mayor is a hypocritical law-and-order conservative who not just embarrasses himself and the city he's supposed to represent, but he voted to cut funding for addiction, voted to cut funding for everything but the police. Crowd-sourcing $200K to force the man to step down and have his apologist supporters finally abandon him is well worth the price.

$200K is too much to be given to some crack dealer, I don't care how bad of a mayor Ford is. And this is not even about him anymore, because he's already humiliated. This scandal is surely going to be his demise. But what about the money? What if it doesn't go to the video owners and we never see the tape, because as Cook announced, he cannot make contact with them anymore. You don't read much about this problem. LSM covered <a href="http://lsminsurance.ca/life-insurance-canada/2013/05/deduction-crackstarter-charity">this topic</a> quite extensively. The money will go to some charity, without asking the donors, who gave the money believing they will get something in return. What Gawker really should be doing is giving the money back to the backers if the video cannot be purchased. Because what happens with the tax deductions if the money goes to charity? Who gets that?

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